texas hold em poker
Texas hold 'em (also hold'em, holdem) is the most popular poker game in the casinos and poker card rooms across North America and Europe.[1] Hold 'em is a community card game where each player may use any combination of the five community cards and the player's own two hole cards to make a poker hand, in contrast to poker variants like stud or draw where each player holds a separate individual hand.
After slow but steady gains in popularity throughout the 20th century, hold 'em's popularity surged in the 2000s due to exposure on television, on the Internet, and in popular literature. During this time hold 'em replaced 7 card stud as the most common game in U.S. casinos, almost totally eclipsing the once popular game.[2] The no-limit betting form is used in the widely televised main event of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) and the World Poker Tour (WPT).
Because each player only starts with two cards and the remaining cards are shared, it presents an opportune game for strategic analysis (including mathematical analysis). Hold 'em's simplicity and popularity have inspired a wide variety of strategy books which provide recommendations for proper play. Most of these books recommend a strategy that involves playing relatively few hands but betting and raising often with the hands one playsIn Texas hold 'em, like all variants of poker, individuals compete for an amount of money contributed by the players themselves (called the pot). Because the cards are dealt randomly and outside the control of the players, each player attempts to control the amount of money in the pot based on the hand the player holds.
The game is divided into a series of hands or deals; at the conclusion of each hand the pot is awarded to one or a few players. A hand ends either at the showdown (when the remaining players compare their hands), or when all but one player have folded and abandoned their claims to the pot. The pot is then awarded to the player(s) who have not folded and have the best hand. (This is usually only one player, but can be more in the case of a tie.)
The objective of winning players is not winning every individual hand, but rather making mathematically correct decisions. By making such decisions, winning poker players maximize their long run winnings, which is achieved by maximizing their expected utility on each round of bettingAlthough little is known about the invention of Texas hold 'em, the Texas State Legislature officially recognizes Robstown, Texas as the game's birthplace, dating the game to the early 1900s.[5]
After its invention and spread throughout Texas, hold 'em was introduced to Las Vegas in 1967 by a group of Texan gamblers and card players, including Crandell Addington, Doyle Brunson, and Amarillo Slim.[6] Addington said the first time he saw the game was in 1959. "They didn't call it Texas hold 'em at the time, they just called it hold 'em... I thought then that if it were to catch on, it would become the game. Draw poker, you only bet twice; hold 'em, you bet four times. That meant you could play strategically. This was more of a thinking man's game."[7]
For several years the Golden Nugget Casino in Downtown Las Vegas was the only casino in Las Vegas to offer the game. At that time, the Golden Nugget's poker room was "truly a 'sawdust joint,' with... oiled sawdust covering the floors."[8] Because of its location and decor, this poker room did not receive many rich drop-in clients, and as a result, professional players sought a more prominent location. In 1969, the Las Vegas professionals were invited to play Texas hold 'em at the entrance of the now-demolished Dunes Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. This prominent location, and the relative inexperience of poker players with Texas hold 'em, resulted in a very remunerative game for professional players.[8]
After a disappointing attempt to establish a "Gambling Fraternity Convention", Tom Moore added the first ever poker tournament to the Second Annual Gambling Fraternity Convention held in 1969. This tournament featured several games including Texas hold 'em. In 1970 Benny and Jack Binion acquired the rights to this convention, renamed it the World Series of Poker, and moved it to their casino Binion's Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas. After its first year, a journalist, Tom Thackrey, suggested that the main event of this tournament should be no-limit Texas hold 'em. The Binions agreed and ever since no-limit Texas hold 'em has been played as the main event.[8] Interest in the Main Event continued to grow steadily over the next two decades. After receiving only 8 entrants in 1972, the numbers grew to over 100 entrants in 1982, and over 200 in 1991.[9][10][11]
During this time, Doyle Brunson's revolutionary poker strategy guide, Super/System was first published.[12] Despite being self-published and priced at $100 in 1978, the book revolutionized the way poker was played. It was one of the first books to discuss Texas hold 'em, and is today cited as one of the most important books on this game.[13] A few years later, Al Alvarez published a book detailing an early World Series of Poker event.[14] The first book of its kind, it described the world of professional poker players and the World Series of Poker. It is credited with beginning the genre of poker literature and with bringing Texas hold 'em (and poker generally), for the first time, to a wider audience.[15]
Interest in hold 'em outside of Nevada began to grow in the 1980s as well. Although California had legal card rooms offering draw poker, Texas hold 'em was prohibited under a statute which made illegal the now unknown game "stud-horse". However in 1988, Texas hold 'em was declared legally distinct from "stud-horse" in Tibbetts v. Van De Kamp, 271 Cal. Rptr. 792 (1990). Almost immediately card rooms across the state offered Texas hold 'em.[16] (It is often presumed that this decision ruled that hold 'em was a skill game,[17] but the distinction between skill and chance has never entered into California jurisprudence regarding poker.[18]) After a trip to Las Vegas, bookmakers Terry Rogers and Liam Flood introduced the game to European card players in the early 1980sIn the first decade of the 21st century, Texas hold 'em experienced a surge in popularity worldwide.[2] Many observers attribute this growth to the synergy of five factors: the invention of online poker, the game's appearance in film and on television, the 2004-05 NHL lockout,[20] the appearance of television commercials advertising online cardrooms, and the 2003 World Series of Poker championship victory by online qualifier Chris MoneymakerPrior to poker becoming widely televised, the movie Rounders (1998), starring Matt Damon and Edward Norton, gave moviegoers a romantic view of the game as a way of life. Texas hold 'em was the main game played during the movie and the no-limit variety was described, following Doyle Brunson, as the "Cadillac of Poker". A clip of the classic showdown between Johnny Chan and Erik Seidel from the 1988 World Series of Poker was also incorporated into the film.[22]
Hold 'em first caught the public eye as a spectator sport in the United Kingdom with the Late Night Poker TV show in 1999.[23] Fueled by the introduction of lipstick cameras, which allowed spectators to see the players' private cards, hold 'em exploded in popularity as a spectator sport in the United States and Canada in 2003. ESPN's coverage of the 2003 World Series of Poker featured the unexpected victory of Internet player Chris Moneymaker, an amateur player who gained admission to the tournament by winning a series of online tournaments. Moneymaker's victory initiated a sudden surge of interest in the World Series, based on the egalitarian idea that anyone – even a rank novice – can become a world champion.[24]
In 2003, there were 839 entrants in the WSOP Main Event,[25] and triple that number in 2004.[26] The crowning of the 2004 WSOP champion, Greg "Fossilman" Raymer, a patent attorney from Connecticut, further fueled the popularity of the event among amateur (and particularly internet) players.[27] In the 2005 Main Event, an unprecedented 5,619 entrants vied for a first prize of $7,500,000. The winner, Joe Hachem of Australia, was a semi-professional player.[28] This growth continued in 2006, with 8,773 entrants and a first place prize of $12,000,000 (won by Jamie Gold).[29]
Beyond the World Series, other television shows – including the long running World Poker Tour – are credited with increasing the popularity of Texas hold 'em.[30] In addition to its presence on network and general audience cable television,[31] poker has now become a regular part of sports networks' programming in the United StatesTwenty years after the publication of Alvarez's groundbreaking book, James McManus published a semi-autobiographical book, Positively Fifth Street (2003), which simultaneously describes the trial surrounding the murder of Ted Binion and McManus' own entry into the 2000 World Series of Poker.[33] McManus, a poker amateur, finished 5th in the No-Limit Texas Hold 'em main event, winning over $200,000.[34] In the book McManus discusses events surrounding the World Series, the trial of Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish, poker strategy, and some history of poker and the world series.
Michael Craig's 2005 book The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King details a series of high stakes Texas hold 'em one-on-one games between Texas banker Andy Beal and a rotating group of poker professionals. As of 2006, these games were the highest stakes ever played, reaching $100,000–$200,000 fixed limit
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